You’ve heard it before.
“Blogging is dead.”
So many businesses have given up on maintaining their blogs because they don’t feel like it helps with the bottom line: sales.
But that’s only the case if you don’t know HOW to blog.
Even in 2023, statistics show that blogging leads to 55% more website visitors. And for businesses that invest in content marketing (blogging), they produce an average of 67% more monthly leads than businesses that don’t.
While blogging (or at least quality blogging) may seem costly, it is actually 62% less expensive than traditional marketing formats – and generates three times the leads! And the key to having those blog posts pay off in the form of paying customers is SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. This means you aren’t paying for ads to have visitors click through to your website.
Search engines gather information about all the content they can find on the Internet and use it to build an index. They then feed that index through an algorithm and try to match the data when someone types something into a search engine, like Google.
If employed properly, SEO attracts visitors to your website and makes them aware of the product, service or information you offer. This can lead to more sales (if you are a product or service-based business) or an increase in popularity (if you are a blogger or news outlet).
Here are 5 simple SEO tips for how your blog can bring in customers.
Plan your Keywords
Use a Keyword Planner, such as Google’s, and type in a word or phrase that relates to your business, product or the subject you’re writing about. Select a few of the results that relate most to your subject and insert them into the text of the page or post. Search engines find those keywords within the text and when someone searches for them, it boosts your site higher in results.
Save your keyword list for the next two tips!
Add Alt-Text to Images
Use the keywords you discovered in Tip 1 and insert them as Alt-Text (or Title or File Name) for the images you include on your web pages and blog posts. Search engines find those keywords and when someone searches for them in Image Results, your image will make its way to the top of the search results. This is another way that prospective clients or your ideal audience can find you and click through to your website.
Change your Meta-Description & Slug
The Meta-Description is what you see under a page title on search engine results, while the Slug is the last few words of the website url following the “.com”.
Use the keywords you discovered in Tip 1 and insert them in the meta-description and the slug, if possible. The way that this works is similar to adding alt-text to your images. Search engines find those keywords in the Meta-Description and the Slug and when someone searches for them the search engine will push your post (and your website) up in results.
Add Backlinks
Backlinks are internal links, other pages and posts on your website, that you link to. The idea is that people will click on those links which keep them on your website longer. If you keep people on your website longer, your bounce rate, the percentage of visitors that leave your web page without clicking on a link or making a purchase, will improve and search engines will give your site a higher ranking.
Keep your Website Updated
This is the one thing that many businesses forget when it comes to blogging. Search engines prefer websites with fresh, updated content and will use that as a factor in where your site falls in search results.
Of course it is important to keep your “About Me,” “Services,” “Products,” “FAQs,” and other static pages up to date with the most recent information. However, keeping your website blog updated with new posts on a regular basis (meaning a schedule that you can keep up with), and deleting outdated blog posts or updating blog posts with new information will help your website to show up higher in the search results for your keywords (what you figured out in step 1).
While these tips are simple enough for any business owner to start putting them into practice on their own, having the time to keep your blog updated is easier said than done. Sometimes it can be helpful to hire a writer, even if it is just to get you started.
Having someone like this on your team can bring in more customers without you having to do anything more than telling them what you want to write about. If you want to see how a freelance blog writer can help you to scale your business, I would love to chat as my specialty is helping entrepreneurs and solopreneurs keep their blog updated.
But if you feel ready to start blogging on your own, give these five tips a try and then watch your website climb the rankings and the clients will start rolling in!
